Hope

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  At one point, he shifts slightly forward on the couch, looking intently at the images until he sees Doug’s opponent stumble briefly on the mat, appearing to lose his footwork. “There,” he says. “That’s where you had him. See his balance shift?” “Yeah,” Doug agrees. “I didn’t get him then, though.” “It’s OK,” Dan says. “Here comes your other chance.” Sure enough, a few seconds later Doug’s opponent wavers again on his feet, and this time Doug gets the takedown and scores the points that eventually stand up for his victory. Dan saw it coming because, clearly, he has seen this video dozens of times already, on dozens of nights, after dozens of workouts, in advance of dozens of matches. But all the fun’s in seeing the thing as if for the first time. “He wasn’t bad,” Dan says of his father from the couch, a little smile playing across his face. He could mean the match he has just seen, or he could mean Doug’s high school career in general. Dan doesn’t completely mind the fact that his father’s wrestling life came before his. Doug set the bar, was part of the first real group of North-Linn wrestlers to bring an identity to the school in the sport. He did good things. Dan is pretty sure he can go them one better. At the North-Linn gymnasium the next evening, Dan is doing the work before the work. Someone has to get the place ready to host an invitational tournament on the weekend, and Dan and his teammates are the ones. They spend an hour or so rolling out the large wrestling mats, taping their edges together and then down against the floor to prevent them from peeling up during competition. The junior varsity kids, the ones with no real standing in the program yet, draw the duty of disinfecting the mats with ammonia spray and swabbing them with towel-wrapped push brooms. When the other wrestlers aren’t sure where something should go, they ask Dan. He ought to know: This is his backyard. He is familiar with pretty much every inch of the North-Linn gym, because he has either run, wrestled on or cleaned all of it a hundred times over. On this night, he works easily, quietly. “It’s a little like home,” he says. Funny, then, that in so many ways Dan—only his coach, Brad Bridgewater, gets away with calling him Danny—already has prepared to leave. From up there in the empty bleachers, with a few wrestling-team members still down on the floor scooting chairs and scorers’ tables into place, it is clear that a part of Dan has moved on, that some of him has gone ahead to college already. “I think it’s easier for me this way,” he says. “I know I still have something to go on to. This isn’t the end of the road for me. In a lot of ways, I’m just getting started.” And it is more complicated than that, of course.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  Now this was spooky because for thousands of years big-haired preachers have talked about the idea that we need to make a decision, to follow or reject Christ. They would offer these ideas as a sort of magical solution to the dilemma of life. I had always hated hearing about it because it seemed so entirely unfashionable a thing to believe, but it did explain things. Maybe these unfashionable ideas were pointing at something mystical and true. And, perhaps, I was judging the idea, not by its merit, but by the fashionable or unfashionable delivery of the message. A long time ago I went to a concert with my friend Rebecca. Rebecca can sing better than anybody I’ve ever heard sing. I heard this folksinger was coming to town, and I thought she might like to see him because she was a singer too. The tickets were twenty bucks, which is a lot to pay if you’re not on a date. Between songs, though, he told a story that helped me resolve some things about God. The story was about his friend who is a Navy SEAL. He told it like it was true, so I guess it was true, although it could have been a lie. The folksinger said his friend was performing a covert operation, freeing hostages from a building in some dark part of the world. His friend’s team flew in by helicopter, made their way to the compound and stormed into the room where the hostages had been imprisoned for months. The room, the folksinger said, was filthy and dark. The hostages were curled up in a corner, terrified. When the SEALs entered the room, they heard the gasps of the hostages. They stood at the door and called to the prisoners, telling them they were Americans. The SEALs asked the hostages to follow them, but the hostages wouldn’t. They sat there on the floor and hid their eyes in fear. They were not of healthy mind and didn’t believe their rescuers were really Americans.

• From Love & Sex: A Christian Guide to Healthy Intimacy (2018)

  “Son, Trevor, if you surrender your life to Jesus, I think He will do for you what He did for David. David called God, ‘The lover of my soul, and the one who walked with me through the valley of death and spread out a banqueting table for me to eat at.’ Son, you have walked through some significant pain today. But there is always more. It’s never one and done. Become a man like David, a man after God’s heart, and your life will be transformed. David suffered tremendous rejection, not just from his own father, but also from his father-in-law who was mentally unstable and frequently jealous of David. If we don’t grieve our wounds, surrender the pain and hurt and desire for a pound of flesh, our hearts become hard and we lose our capacity to love. Several times, King Saul threatened and attempted to kill David. And David never pretended it didn’t happen; David didn’t minimize his painful life experiences. He found a way to grieve the pain and to release the anger he had for the ones who hurt him, so he could keep his heart pure. “That kind of release isn’t for the sake of the other person. It’s for the sake of your heart. If you face your pain, grieve it, surrender it to Jesus, you will no longer be the kid who was given up for adoption and not wanted by his adoptive father. You will become the man who is chosen, adopted by God, wanted, and pursued by the Father of all Fathers. If you invite Him in, He will put His royal robe across your shoulders and slip His signet ring onto your finger. He does all this to say, to declare, ‘This is my son. He belongs to me. He is my friend and the one I share my secrets with.’ You will never be alone again, Trevor. You will belong to God.” “How do I do that?” Trevor asked. James stepped in, “Trevor, it’s pretty straightforward; you just invite Him into your life. Scripture talks about being born again in the spirit. You have been born once, but your spirit hasn’t been born again. If you invite Him into your life, your spirit will be born and you will spend eternity with Him. You will never be alone again. Jesus will be your best friend. Well, actually, God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit will be your three best friends. And then, He says He washes your sin away and makes you white as snow. Jesus went to the cross for our sins. He died so you and I don’t have to die. He shed His blood for us, to make us new, to redeem the garbage, to make us new creations in Him. His blood washes us and makes us new men, no longer shackled by our sin and shame.” “I want that. I need that,” Trevor said. “Me too,” Jeff echoed.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  Television drives me crazy sometimes because everybody is so good-looking, and yet you walk through the aisles of the grocery stores, and nobody looks like that. Somebody told me that in London people don’t judge you as much by the way you look, and I think it is true because late night on PBS they play shows out of England and the actors aren’t good-looking, and I sit there wondering if anybody else is watching and asking the same question: Why aren’t the actors in London good looking? And I already know the answer to that question, it is that America is one of the most immoral countries in the world and that our media has reduced humans to slabs of meat. And there will always be this tension while I live in this country because none of this will ever change. Ani Difranco, in her song “32 Flavors,” says that she is a poster girl with no poster, she is 32 flavors and then some, and she is beyond our peripheral vision, so we might want to turn our heads, because some day we’re gonna get hungry and eat all of the words we just said. And just about everybody I know loves those lines because they speak of heaven and of hope and the idea that some day a King will come and dictate, through some mystical act of love, an existence in which everybody has to eat their own words because we won’t be allowed to judge each other on the surface of things anymore. And this fills me with hope. Jean-Paul Sartre said hell is other people. But that Indian speaker I really like named Ravi Zacharias says that heaven can be other people, too, and that we have the power to bring a little of heaven into the lives of others every day. I know this is true because I have felt it when Penny or Tony tells me I mean something to them and they love me. I pray often that God would give me the strength and dignity to receive their love. My friend Julie from Seattle says the key to everything rests in the ability to receive love, and what she says is right because my personal experience tells me so. I used to not be able to receive love at all, and to this day I have some problems, but it isn’t like it used to be. My eye would find things on television and in the media and somehow I would compare myself to them without really knowing I was doing it, and this really screwed me up because I never for a second felt I was worthy of anybody’s compliments.

• From The Triumph of Christianity (2018)

  < 128 < Lecture 19  The Conversion of Constantine y One needed divine assistance for such an enormous task, but it appeared the polytheistic option wasn’t working. Constantine decided to rely on one god alone, his father’s, and he was rewarded with a vision. In fact, the vision came to his entire army. y At midday, they looked up to the sky and saw a trophy in the shape of a cross, with text attached to it that said, “By this conquer.” Constantine had no idea what it meant, but that night he had a dream in which Christ himself appeared to him. Christ instructed him to make a copy of what he had seen as an object that would allow him to conquer his enemies. y Eusebius relayed that Constantine still had no idea what this was or what it meant. That shows he was decidedly not Christian yet. He called in spiritual advisors who told him that this was the sign of the cross and explained who Christ was. y Constantine ordered the object to be made. The object was a tall pole, plated with gold. It had a crossbeam, making it in the shape of a cross. A jeweled wreath was at the top with two Greek letters superimposed, forming the Chi-Rho symbol. The letters were the first two of the name of Christ in Greek. y This trophy is called the labarum. Constantine reportedly carried it into battle and won. y Worship of the divine is all about divine power. Constantine converted to worship the most powerful god of all. ` The third account was written by a Christian scholar named Lactantius. This account was produced much earlier than Eusebius’s, just a few years after the event. y Lactantius knew Constantine personally. Lactantius was a famous rhetorician, and not long after the emperor’s rise to power, he was appointed to be the personal tutor for Constantine’s eldest son, Crispus. y He was then part of Constantine’s household. He had unusual opportunities to hear tales of the emperor’s life. < 129 < Lecture 19  The Conversion of Constantine y His account of Constantine’s conversion appears in a booklet that Lactantius wrote called Deaths of the Persecutors . In it, this Christian apologist describes the horrible and excruciating deaths suffered by the Roman officials who had been responsible for the persecutions of Christians. y In part because Constantine’s conversion happened during the Great Persecution, Lactantius takes the opportunity to explain how it actually happened. Lactantius relates what Constantine had told him. y On the night before the battle at the Milvian Bridge, Constantine had a dream in which an unknown figure told him to have the heavenly sign of God decorated on the shields of his soldiers. y He did so, and again it was in the shape of the Chi-Rho. Armed with this sign, they attacked the troops of Maxentius, defeated them, and recaptured Rome. Convinced of the power of Christ, Constantine converted.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  HILARY. (de Trin. x. c. 18.) He calls Himself the bread, because He is the origin of His own body. And lest it should be thought that the virtue and nature of the Word had given way to the flesh, He calls the bread His flesh, that, inasmuch as the bread came down from heaven, it might be seen that His body was not of human conception, but a heavenly body. To say that the bread is His own, is to declare that the Word assumed His body Himself. THEOPHYLACT. For we do not eat God simply, God being impalpable and incorporeal; nor again, the flesh of man simply, which would not profit us. But God having taken flesh into union with Himself, that flesh is quickening. Not that it has changed its own for the Divine nature; but, just as heated iron remains iron, with the action of the heat in it; so our Lord’s flesh is quickening, as being the flesh of the Word of God. BEDE. And to shew the wide interval between the shadow and the light, the type and the reality, He adds, Not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xxvi. 20) The death here meant is death eternal. For even those who eat Christ are subject to natural death; but they live for ever, because Christ is everlasting life. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xlvii. 1) For if it was possible without harvest or fruit of the earth, or any such thing, to preserve the lives of the Israelites of old for forty years, much more will He be able to do this with that spiritual food, of which the manna is the type. He knew how precious a thing life was in men’s eyes, and therefore repeats His promise of life often; just as the Old Testament had done; (Exod. 20:12) only that it only offered length of life, He life without end. (Deut. 22:7) This promise was an abolition of that sentence of death, which sin had brought upon us. These things said He in the synagogue, as He taught in Capernaum; (1 Kings 3:14) where many displays of His power took place. (Ps. 21:4; 91:16) He taught in the synagogue and in the temple, (Prov. 3:2) with the view of attracting the multitude, and as a sign that He was not acting in opposition to the Father. BEDE. Mystically, Capernaum, which means beautiful town, stands for the world: the synagogue, for the Jewish people. The meaning is, that our Lord hath, by the mystery of the incarnation, manifested Himself to the world, and also taught the Jewish people His doctrines. 6:60–7160. Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it? 61. When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them, Doth this offend you?

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  Epilogue In the late summer of 2005, Jay Borschel and Dan LeClere packed up their gear, made sure their cell phones and laptops were close by, hunkered down in their families’ cars, and blasted out of town. It was a 900-mile drive from eastern Iowa to the Virginia Tech University campus in Blacksburg, and the wrestlers had someone waiting for them. Though school wasn’t yet to officially begin, Tom Brands didn’t plan on wasting time. Joey Slaton also made the long trip East. Brent Metcalf, the incoming star from Michigan, was meeting up with his new teammates as they hit campus. T. H. Leet, a three-time state champion from Georgia, would be in Blacksburg as well. The second-ranked recruiting class in college wrestling was converging on its future, and Brands was one step ahead of them. Despite his team having won an Atlantic Coast Conference title and seemingly built instant momentum in his first year, Brands had already penciled things out for the coming season, and it added up to a difficult but forward- thinking conclusion: His new kids were going to have to sit out their freshmen years, no matter how much he wanted to see them on the mat. Using his own college and international competitive career as a guide, Brands recognized the value in giving Jay and Dan and the others a year to figure out how to make campus life and wrestling life work together, to learn to live away from home, to get stronger, quicker, tougher—to do all this the Brands way, without the pressure to win immediately. The year could be invaluable. It could set up Brands’s charges for four years of sustained success, and Brands believed both

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  " Since you have been constant for seven years," said the queen, " I must be no more precipitate in behev- mg you than you have been in declaring your love to me. Therefore, if you speak the truth, I wish to convince myself of it in a manner that shall leave no room for doubt ; and if I am satisfied with the result of the trial, I will belies^e you to be such towards me as you swear that you are ; and then, when I find you to be indeed what you say, you shall find me to be what you wish." Elisor besought her to put him to any proof she pleased, there being nothing so hard that would not ap- pear to him very easy, in the hope that he might be happy enough to convince her of the perfect love he bore her. He only waited, he said, to be honoured with her com- mands. " If you love me, Elisor, as much as you say," replied the queen, " I am sure that nothing will seem hard to you to obtain my good graces ; so I command you, by the desire you have of possessing them, and the fear of losing them, that to-morrow, without seeing me more, ^ ou quit the court and go to a place where for seven 16 242 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE [A'oz'e/ 24. years you shall hear nothing of me, nor I of you. You know well that you love me, since you have had seven j years' experience of the fact. When I shall have a similar seven years' experience, I shall believe what all your protestations would fail to assure me of.'' This cruel command made Elisor believe at first that her intention was to get rid of him ; but, upon second thoughts, he accepted the condition, hoping that the proof would do more for him than all the words he could utter. " If I have lived seven years without any hope," he said, " under the painful necessity of dissembling my love, now that it is known to you, and that I have some gleam of hope, I shall pass the other seven years with patience and calmness. But, madam, since in obeying the command you impose upon me I am deprived of all the joy I have ever had in the world, what hope do you give me that, at the end of seven years, you will own me for your faithful servant .-' " Drawing a ring off her finger, " Let us cut this ring in two," said the queen ; " I will keep one half and you the other, in order that I may recognize you by that token, in case length of time makes me forget your face."

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Reply to Objection 1: As Augustine says (Contra Faust. xxii, 70): “To take the sword is to arm oneself in order to take the life of anyone, without the command or permission of superior or lawful authority.” On the other hand, to have recourse to the sword (as a private person) by the authority of the sovereign or judge, or (as a public person) through zeal for justice, and by the authority, so to speak, of God, is not to “take the sword,” but to use it as commissioned by another, wherefore it does not deserve punishment. And yet even those who make sinful use of the sword are not always slain with the sword, yet they always perish with their own sword, because, unless they repent, they are punished eternally for their sinful use of the sword. Reply to Objection 2: Such like precepts, as Augustine observes (De Serm. Dom. in Monte i, 19), should always be borne in readiness of mind, so that we be ready to obey them, and, if necessary, to refrain from resistance or self-defense. Nevertheless it is necessary sometimes for a man to act otherwise for the common good, or for the good of those with whom he is fighting. Hence Augustine says (Ep. ad Marcellin. cxxxviii): “Those whom we have to punish with a kindly severity, it is necessary to handle in many ways against their will. For when we are stripping a man of the lawlessness of sin, it is good for him to be vanquished, since nothing is more hopeless than the happiness of sinners, whence arises a guilty impunity, and an evil will, like an internal enemy.” Reply to Objection 3: Those who wage war justly aim at peace, and so they are not opposed to peace, except to the evil peace, which Our Lord “came not to send upon earth” (Mat. 10:34). Hence Augustine says (Ep. ad Bonif. clxxxix): “We do not seek peace in order to be at war, but we go to war that we may have peace. Be peaceful, therefore, in warring, so that you may vanquish those whom you war against, and bring them to the prosperity of peace.” Reply to Objection 4: Manly exercises in warlike feats of arms are not all forbidden, but those which are inordinate and perilous, and end in slaying or plundering. In olden times warlike exercises presented no such danger, and hence they were called “exercises of arms” or “bloodless wars,” as Jerome states in an epistle [*Reference incorrect: cf. Veget., De Re Milit. i].

• From Simply Jesus (2011)

  A message of comfort and hope for God’s people in the hopelessness of exile, it constantly stresses the greatness and sovereignty of the one true God over against the idols of Babylon and those who follow them, including those who seem to be great kings and tyrants on the earth. But it also repeatedly plays off the power and faithfulness of YHWH against the folly and failings of Israel itself; Israel has not only given up hope, but seems to have abandoned faith as well. But, flanked by the wickedness of Babylon, on the one hand, and the failure of Israel, on the other, a third figure emerges, bearing the divine purposes into the heart of the storm. The “servant of YHWH ” is a strange, much-discussed character, to whom we are introduced in 42:1–9 and whose work—of bringing to fulfillment the rescue operation God has in mind—is then brought into sharper and sharper focus in three subsequent subpoems embedded firmly within the larger narrative flow of the whole section. The identity of the “servant” has been widely discussed. It is clear that, from one point of view, the servant is “Israel, in whom I will be glorified” (49:3)—the people of God through whom God’s justice will spread to the nations (42:1) and his light shine to the ends of the earth (49:6). But throughout the larger poem it is equally clear that the nation as a whole is not up to this task, indeed has failed dismally in it. At the same time, those in Israel who remain faithful are described as those who “obey the voice of the servant” (50:10), so that the servant cannot simply be identified with the faithful remnant. Somehow, the servant is a kind of true Israel figure, doing Israel’s job on behalf of the Israel that has failed. And doing God’s job on behalf of God himself . In the three subsequent poems (49:1–7; 50:4–9; 52:13–53:12) it becomes clear how the servant will complete God’s rescue operation. He will do it through his own obedient suffering, ultimately through his own humble, shameful, and even sacrificial death. This final poem follows directly on from one of the clearest brief statements of the whole kingdom-of-God agenda anywhere in the Old Testament, in 52:7–12: How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns” [i.e., “Your God is king”]. Listen! Your sentinels lift up their voices, together they sing for joy ; For in plain sight they see the return of YHWH to Zion. Break forth together into singing, you ruins of Jerusalem; For YHWH has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xxxix. 2) After, The hour cometh, He adds, and now is; to let us know that it will not be long before it comes. For as in the future resurrection we shall be roused by hearing His voice speaking to us, so is it now. THEOPHYLACT. Here He speaks with a reference to those whom He was about to raise from the dead: viz. the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, the son of the widow, and Lazarus. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xxii. s. 12) Or, He means to guard against our thinking, that the being passed from death to life, refers to the future resurrection; its meaning being, that he who believes is passed: and therefore He says, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour cometh, (what hour?) and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live. He saith not, because they live, they hear; but in consequence of hearing, they come to life again. But what is hearing, but obeying? For they who believe and do according to the true faith, live, and are not dead; whereas those who believe not, or, believing, live a bad life, and have not love, are rather to be accounted dead. And yet that hour is still going on, and will go on, the same hour, to the end of the world: as John says, It is the last hour. (1 John 2:13) AUGUSTINE. When the dead, i. e. unbelievers, shall hear the voice of the Son of God, i. e. the Gospel: and they that hear, i. e. who obey, shall live, i. e. be justified, and no longer remain in unbelief. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xxii. s. 9) But some one will ask, Hath the Son life, whence those who believe will live? Hear His own words: As the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself. Life is original and absolute in Him, cometh from no other source, dependeth on no other power. He is not as if He were partaker of a life, which is not Himself; but has life in Himself: so as that He Himself is His own life. Hear, O dead soul, the Father, speaking by the Son: arise, that thou mayest receive that life which thou hast not in thyself, and enter into the first resurrection. For this life, which the Father and the Son are, pertaineth to the soul, and is not perceived by the body. The rational mind only discovers the life of wisdom.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Concerning the humanity of Christ, seven more are proposed. The first is on the incarnation and conception of Christ. The second deals with the nativity, which involves a special difficulty because of our Lord’s coming forth from the closed womb of the Virgin. The third article is on the death, passion, and burial; the fourth on the descent into hell; the fifth on the resurrection; the sixth on the ascension; and the seventh treats of Christ’s coming for the judgment. And so there are fourteen articles in all. Other authorities, reasonably enough, include faith in the three persons under one article, on the ground that we cannot believe in the Father without believing in the Son and also in the Holy Spirit, the bond of love uniting the first two persons. However, they distinguish the article on the resurrection from the article on eternal reward. Accordingly, there are two articles about God, one on the unity, the other on the Trinity. Four articles deal with God’s effects: one with creation, the second with justification, the third with the general resurrection, and the fourth with reward. Similarly, as regards belief in the humanity of Christ, these authors comprise the conception and the nativity under one article, and they also include the passion and death under one article. According to this way of reckoning, therefore, we have twelve articles in all. And this should be enough on faith. PART TWO HOPE CHAPTER 1 NECESSITY OF THE VIRTUE OF HOPEThe Prince of the Apostles has left us an admonition urging us to render an account not only of our faith, but also of the hope that is in us [1 Pet 3:15]. In the first part of the present work we have briefly set forth the teaching of Christian faith. We now turn to the task of undertaking, in compendious fashion, an exposition of the truths pertaining to hope. We should recall that in one kind of knowledge, man’s desire can come to rest. We naturally desire to know truth, and when we do know it, our craving in this direction is satisfied. But in the knowledge of faith man’s desire never comes to rest. For faith is imperfect knowledge: the truths we accept on faith are not seen. This is why the Apostle calls faith “the evidence of things that appear not” (Heb. 11:1).

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  2. Again, that for which we pray to God, we hope to obtain from him. We pray that God should bring others to eternal blessedness, in accordance with James 5:16: “ pray for one another, that ye may be healed. ” We can therefore hope for the eternal blessedness of others. 3. Again, hope and despair refer to the same thing. Now one can despair of the eternal blessedness of another, otherwise there would have been no point in Augustine ’ s saying that one should despair of no man while he lives (De Verb. Dom., Sermo 71, cap. 13). One can therefore hope for eternal life for another. On the other hand: Augustine says {Enchirid. 8): “ hope is only of such things as pertain to him who is said to hope for them. ” I answer: there are two ways in which one can hope for something. One can hope for something absolutely, such hope being always for an arduous good which pertains to oneself. But one can also hope for something if something else is presupposed, and in this way one can hope for what pertains to another. To make this clear, we must observe that love and hope differ in this, that love denotes a union of the lover with the loved one, whereas hope denotes a movement or projection of one ’ s desire towards an arduous good. Now a union is between things which are distinct. Love can therefore be directly towards another person whom one unites to oneself in love, and whom one looks upon as oneself. A movement, on the other hand, is always towards a term which is its own, and which is related to that which moves. For this reason, hope is directly concerned with a good which is one ’ s own, not with a good which pertains to another. But if it is presupposed that one is united to another in love, one can then hope and desire something for the other as if for oneself. In this way one can hope for eternal life for another, in so far as one is united to him in love. It is by the same virtue of hope that one hopes on behalf of oneself and on behalf of another, just as it is by the same virtue of charity that one loves God, oneself, and one ’ s neighbour. The answers to the objections are now obvious. ARTICLE FOUR Whether One may Lawfully Hope in Man1. It seems that one may lawfully hope in man. The object of hope is indeed eternal blessedness. But we are helped to attain eternal blessedness by the patronage of the saints, since Gregory says that “ predestination is furthered by the prayers of the saints ” (1 Dialog., cap. 8). One may therefore hope in man.

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  when Dan and Leah and a friend were driving to Cedar Rapids for a night out and got hit by a train as their car crossed the tracks. They somehow escaped unscathed, after which Mary remembers telling her son, “I don’t know what God has planned for you, Daniel, but it must be something very special.” And maybe Dan will go on and do great things, Olympian things. He could, anyway. You look at him here, now, with this aura of invincibility about him, these other wrestlers gazing upon him with an odd mixture of longtime friendship and recently developed awe, and you see Tom Brands down the road waiting to mold him, and you realize that anything is possible. And Dan could do those things, special things—become a national wrestler, or even an international one. But then, after it is done, maybe Doug and Mary’s son will find his way back to unpaved roads and icy bridges, farmhouses, big fields, little wrestling rooms. Maybe, when you get down to it, special is in the eye of the beholder. At the LeClere family farmhouse, the one in which Doug’s parents live, where Doug’s father was born upstairs and now uses an electric chair-lift to get up and down those stairs, the kids lounge around on the couches and chairs and on the well-padded carpet. Outside, the light rain has begun to fall. Snow is on the way. Dan and Leah are stretched out, both still small enough that they don’t even take up the full couch, and everyone else—Nick, Chris, cousins—is either fully prone or headed that way. Nobody slept much last night. Dan, in particular, looks completely wiped out. It may be the most well-earned rest of the year. Quietly sneaking away from the group, Doug’s mother goes upstairs to show the scrapbooks she has put together for her grandson Dan over the years: dozens of photographs of that little kid, maybe 5 years old, standing on the winner’s podium and collecting his little medals. Some kids just grow up expecting to win. And there are photos of Dan doing other things, playing baseball, fishing, going to Bible school, even running cross-country or track, although she says, “Wrestling is pretty much what he’s done.” And ever so true. Dan is not just a guy who wrestles; he is, like his father before him, a wrestler. The seed took only partial root in Michael, who had dreams in other directions, to writing and drawing and architecture. It took partial root in Nick, for whom football has been really the first love; only recently has Nick told Mary that he might consider wrestling in college, since he has slowly come to realize he will be on the small side for a football player. It’s too soon to know about Chris, of course, although he has been with it all along and seems so completely ready to officially join up,

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  I remain the Executive Director of EJI, which is a great privilege. With my amazing colleagues at EJI, I continue to represent people on death row, children prosecuted as adults, and incarcerated women, men, and children who have been wrongly convicted or unfairly sentenced. In February 2019, we won a landmark ruling from the United States Supreme Court banning the execution of condemned people who become incompetent as a result of dementia or neurological disease. I continue to meet stonecatchers along the way who inspire me and make me believe that we can do better for the accused, convicted, and condemned among us—and that all of us can do better for one another. The work continues. In memory of Alice Golden Stevenson, my mom Acknowledgments [image file=image_rsrc32M.jpg] Iwant to thank the hundreds of accused, convicted, and imprisoned men, women, and children with whom I have worked and who have taught me so much about hope, justice, and mercy. I’m especially appreciative of and humbled by the people who appear in this book, victims and survivors of violence, criminal justice professionals, and those who have been condemned to unimaginably painful spaces and yet have shown tremendous courage and grace. All the names of people who appear in these pages are real with the exception of just a few whose privacy and security needed to be protected. I’m extremely grateful to Chris Jackson, my extraordinary editor, for his thoughtful guidance and kind assistance. I feel very, very fortunate to have worked with an editor as insightful and generous. I’m also deeply thankful to Cindy Spiegel and Julie Grau whose tremendous support and feedback has genuinely inspired me in ways I never imagined. One of my great joys with this project has been the privilege of working with and learning from all my new friends at Spiegel & Grau and Random House who have been so wonderfully encouraging. I want to also thank Sharon Steinerman at New York University School of Law for her excellent research assistance for this project. All my work is made possible by the exceptional staff of the Equal Justice Initiative, each of whom fearlessly contributes to the cause of justice every day with enough hope and humility to make me believe that we can do the things that must be done to serve the least of these. I want to especially thank Aaryn Urell and Randy Susskind for feedback and editing. Additionally, I’m grateful to Eva Ansley and Evan Parzych for research assistance. Finally, I cannot say enough about Doug Abrams, agent extraordinaire, who persuaded me to take on this project. Without his invaluable guidance, encouragement, and friendship, this book would not have been possible.

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  soundly beaten by Beatty. There are reasonable explanations for this, among them the fact that Jay didn’t rest after the State Tournament as he should have but rather went off to compete in a national tournament, but there is no denying the result. The Iowa diehards crow, seeing in the final score a vindication of Jim Zalesky’s decision not to pursue Jay more vigorously; it looks to them like Beatty was the one they should have been coveting all along. The two may eventually see each other, be it at a national tournament or around the NCAA. Maybe Jay should make a printout of some of the message-board sentiments, just in case. Then again, it is possible that Jay won’t be spending much time worrying about it. He is already drifting ahead, mentally, to Brands and Virginia Tech, to becoming a national power as a wrestler, one who beats other nationally ranked wrestlers. He is most likely to redshirt his freshman year, spend it in the wrestling room with the super-charged Brands getting ready to be an NCAA ass- kicker. Jay might well be too busy having a wrestling career to worry about having one. It was last week that Carol Borschel took note of the fact that no one had stopped by to decorate the family’s lawn or front door, curious only because cheerleaders had done so during the first couple of years that Jay headed for the State Tournament. “I guess they decided not to this year,” she remarked to Sandy McDonough, mother of the 103-pounder. “Oh, they did Matt’s,” Sandy replied. As it happened, the cheerleaders went to the wrong house, in a different part of town, the evening they set out to decorate Jay’s lawn and door. Four straight trips to the State Tournament, and Jay still finds himself unknown by his own school—even by people who are trying to love him. It’d be funny if it weren’t true. “That’s pretty good, though,” Jay says from the couch, a real chuckle coming from him. On second thought, maybe it’s funny because it’s true. The really great ones, deep down, just don’t give a damn. Dan LeClere dealt with his depression and got past it, and he dealt with his family dynamic and never let it slow his drive. He suffered with fairly good humor his week of inordinate attention in Des Moines, but the fact of the matter is, he was relieved

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  I was trying to shake off the dark feeling that the morning’s events had conjured when the officers brought Walter into the courtroom. Because there was no jury, the judge had not permitted me to give him street clothes to wear, so Walter was wearing his prison uniform. They allowed him to be in the courtroom without handcuffs but had insisted on keeping his ankles shackled. Michael and I conferred briefly about the order of witnesses as the rest of McMillian’s family and supporters slowly filed through the metal detector, past the dog, and into the courtroom. Despite the State’s early-morning maneuvers and the bad omen of the dog and Mrs. Williams, we had another good day in court. Evidence from the state mental health workers who had dealt with Myers after he initially refused to testify in the first trial and was sent to the Taylor Hardin Secure Medical Facility for evaluation confirmed Myers’s testimony from the day before. Dr. Omar Mohabbat explained that Myers had told him then “that the police had framed him to accept the penalty for the murder case that he is accused of or ‘to testify’ that ‘the man did.’ ” Mohabbat reported that Myers “categorically denied having anything to do with the alleged crime. He claimed, ‘I don’t know the name of this girl, I don’t know the time of the alleged crime, I don’t know the date of the alleged crime, I don’t know the place of the alleged crime.’ ” Mohabbat testified that Myers had told him, “They told me to say what they wanted me to say.” Evidence from other doctors further confirmed this testimony. Dr. Norman Poythress from Taylor Hardin explained that Myers had told him that “his prior ‘confessions’ are bogus and were coerced out of him by the police through keeping him physically and psychologically isolated.” We presented evidence from Taylor Hardin staffer Dr. Kamal Nagi, who said that Myers had told him of “another murder that occurred in 1986 where a girl was shot in the Laundromat. [He] said that the ‘police and also my lawyer want me to say that I had driven these people to the Laundromat and they shot the girl, but I won’t do it.’ ” Myers also told Nagi, “They threatened me. They want me to say what they want to hear and if I don’t then they tell me, ‘You’re going to the electric chair.’ ” We had evidence from a fourth doctor to whom Myers confided that he was being pressured to give false testimony against Walter McMillian. Dr. Bernard Bryant testified that Myers told him “he did not commit the crime and that at the time he was incarcerated for the crime, he was threatened and harassed by the local police authorities into confessing he committed a crime.”

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  seek my repose with as much solicitude as you took to deprive me of it. From that very hour we interchanged promises of marriage which were sealed with a ring. It seems to me, then, madam, that you wrong me in calling me wicked. The great and perfect friendship which subsists between the bastard and myself would have given me occasion to do wrong if I had been so disposed, yet we have never gone further than kissing, it being my conviction that God would do me the grace to obtain my father's consent before the consummation of our marriage. I have done nothing against God or against my conscience. I have waited till the age of thirty to see what you and my father would do for me ; and my youth has been passed in such chastity and virtue that no one in the world can justly cast the least reproach upon me in that respect. Finding myself on the decline, and without the hope of obtaining a husband of my own rank, reason determined me to take one according to my taste, not for the lust of the eyes, for, as you know, he whom I have chosen is not comely ; nor yet for that of the flesh, smce there has been no consummation ; nor for the pride and ambition of this life, for he is poor, and of little preferment ; but I have had regard purely and simply to the virtue and good qualities he possesses, as to which all the world is constrained to do him justice, and to the great love he has for me, which affords me the hope of enjoying quiet and contentment with him. After having maturely considered the good and the evil which might result to me, I took the course which ap- peared to me the best, and finally resolved, after two years' examination, to end my life with him ; and this I so fully resolved that no torments which could be inflicted upon me, nor death itself, could make me change my purpose. So, madam, I beseech you to excuse in me 2o6 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE [Nmrl %\ what is highly excusable, as you very well know, and leave me to enjoy the peace and quiet I expect to find with him." The queen, unable to make any reasonable reply to language so resolute and so true, could only renew her passionate chiding and abuse, and bursting into tears, "Wretch," she said, "instead of humbling yourself, and testifying repentance for the fault you have committed, you speak with audacity, and, instead of blushing, you do not so much as shed one tear ; thereby giving plain proof of your obstinacy and hardness of heart. But if the king and your father do as I would have them, they will put you in a place where you will be constrained to hold other language."

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  “The defendant’s motion to change venue is granted,” the judge ruled. When the judge suggested that it be moved to a neighboring county so that witnesses wouldn’t have far to travel, Chestnut remained hopeful. Almost all of the bordering counties had fairly large African American populations: Wilcox County was 72 percent black; Conecuh was 46 percent black; Clarke County was 45 percent black; Butler 42 percent; Escambia was 32 percent black. Only affluent Baldwin County to the south, with its beautiful Gulf of Mexico beaches, was atypical, with an African American population of just 9 percent. The judge took very little time deciding where the trial should be moved. “We’ll go to Baldwin County.” Chestnut and Boynton immediately complained, but the judge reminded them it was their motion. When they sought to withdraw the motion, the judge said he couldn’t authorize a trial in a community where so many people had formed opinions about the accused. The case would be tried in Bay Minette, the seat of Baldwin County. The change of venue was disastrous for Walter. Chestnut and Boynton knew there would be very few, if any, black jurors. They also understood that while jurors from Baldwin County might be less personally connected to Ronda Morrison and her family, it was an extremely conservative county that had made even less progress leaving behind the racial politics of Jim Crow than its neighbors. Given what he’d heard from other death row prisoners about all-white juries, Walter worried about the venue change as well. But he still put his faith in this fact: No one could hear the evidence and believe that he committed this crime. He just didn’t believe that a jury, black or white, could convict him on the nonsensical story told by Ralph Myers—not when he had an unquestionable alibi with close to a dozen witnesses. The February trial was postponed. Once again, Ralph Myers was having second thoughts. After months in the county jail, away from death row, Myers again realized he didn’t want to implicate himself in a murder he had not committed. He waited until the morning that the trial was set to begin before he told investigators that he could not testify because what they wanted him to say was not true. He tried to wrangle for more favorable treatment but decided that there was no punishment he was willing to accept for a murder he hadn’t committed.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  On the train home I carried on reading Valmouth. It was an old grey and white Penguin Classic that James had lent me, the pages stiff and foxed, with a faint smell of lost time. Wet-bottomed wine glasses had left mauve rings over the sketch of the author by Augustus John and the price, 3/6, which appeared in a red square on the cover. Nonetheless, I was enjoined to take especial care of the book, which also contained Prancing Nigger and Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli. James had a mania for Firbank, and it was only out of his love for me that he had let me take away this apparently undistinguished old paperback, which bore on its flyleaf the absurd signature ‘O. de V. Green’. James held the average Firbank-lover in contempt, and professed a very serious attitude towards his favourite writer. I had long deferred reading him in the childishly stubborn way that one resists all keen and repeated recommendations, and had imagined him until now to be a supremely frivolous and silly author. I was surprised to find how difficult, witty and relentless he was. The characters were flighty and extravagant in the extreme, but the novel itself was evidently as tough as nails. I knew I would not begin to grasp it fully until a second or third reading, but what was clear so far was that the inhabitants of the balmy resort of Valmouth found the climate so kind that they lived to an immense age. Lady Parvula de Panzoust (a name I knew already from James’s reapplication of it to a member of the Corry) was hoping to establish some rapport with the virile young David Tooke, a farm boy, and was seeking the help of Mrs Yajñavalkya, a black masseuse, to set up a meeting. ‘He’s awfully choice,’ Mrs Yaj assured the centenarian grande dame. Much of the talk was a kind of highly inflected nonsense, but it gave the unnerving impression that on deeper acquaintance it would all turn out to be packed with fleeting and covert meaning. Mrs Yaj herself spoke in a wonderful black pidgin, prinked out with more exotic turns of phrase. ‘O Allah la Ilaha!’ she reassured the anxious Lady Parvula. ‘Shall I tell you vot de Yajñavalkya device is? Vot it has been dis thousand and thousand ob year? It is bjopti. Bjopti! And vot does bjopti mean? It means discretion. S-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-sh!’ It was such a long ‘Sh!’ that I found myself quietly vocalising it to see what its effect would be. ‘Quiet, Damian,’ the woman opposite me said to her little boy. ‘Gentleman’s trying to read.’